While designers and planners are trained to think about the best location and configuration of the land, regular people think through problems from a “what does this mean to me” point-of-view, not a structured geographical one.
A story told by a person from the place reveals how they think about the issues and apply their values by how they tell what is important and what is not. The story shows how the important things are connected together, the less important ones are overlooked. Although we have not yet made this possible, think how useful it would be if you could find out what other people think before you go to a workshop to discuss future plans.
However, it’s going to be really hard to listen to all those stories. What you really need is a way to search out the topics you want to hear about and hear stories about those. But it would be odd to hear lots of fragments from different people. We’re experimenting with a way to allow you to select the topics that interest you and then string them together in a single story.
How would that look? Watch the video linked below. The story encapsulates some core issues that resonate with real-world people, and by “tagging” the issues that you have selected we can be ready to tackle them with GIS analyses and models that fit your questions in your location.